Sunday, 26 June 2016

Maybe you
saw it on the way here? It’s easy to miss. It used to be notorious in these
parts and lots of people came to see it. Now it’s just a small dilapidated
building in an overgrown patch of woodland.

How did it
start? Who started it? What was it about? There's lots of stories about it, and
it’s hard to know how much truth there may be in any of them. I've lived around
here and been interested in the local stories for a long time, and this is the
best sense I can make of it.

Way back in
the old times, long ago when this was still America, things became real crazy,
even before the Collapse and the War. Maybe the craziness was a cause rather
than an effect. I don't know. Any ways, it seems that before the end of the old
times, some people were scared that the sea was about to rise and swallow them,
or the sun was about to burn them up, or the weather was about to go mad and
torment them and destroy their crops by unseasonable floods and droughts. They
came here, well above sea level, in a temperate climatic zone to live what they
considered to be a more holy life. It’s a bit like the story of Noah, but
without an ark. Some say that these folk were atheists, some say that they were
nature worshipers who hoped to propitiate their angry deities by
self-chastisement, ritualized farming and gardening and blaming their neighbors. Why angry gods would be mollified by this behavior is not
explained. Perhaps there was some echo of the Exodus story, with the 'good
guys' expecting to be 'passed over'when their neighbors got whacked. Maybe there had to be a sacrifice,
probably blood. Other People's Blood, usually better than Other People's Money
for making things happen in such stories. It's difficult to imagine angry gods
being satisfied with an offering of fresh vegetables, now isn't it? There is
that Cain and Abel precedent.

When the bad
times came, everyone got whacked. Some of the 'Greenies', as they were known,
survived; probably helped by having become proficient kitchen gardeners- and by
ceasing to blame their neighbors. This is all background. The real story
begins a bit later, after the War, in the Templar Era.

At that
point the Greenies were gaining adherents as well as a reputation for being
'holier than thou', which other people disliked; especially those other people
who considered that they were the more holy ones. Who did these people
think they were? Vicarious Atonement for the sins of others? That was Somebody
Else’s job description! The American Inquisition
became active, and anything obviously unchristian came under scrutiny. Part of
the craziness hanging over from the old times was that some of these 'Greenies'
had been known to boast of being wizards, apparently without having the
expected skills of being able to turn opponents into green frogs, and so forth.
This was remembered against them. At that time one of the most popular Biblical
quotes became, 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' Some have claimed to
discern different shades or colors of witchcraft, but to the popular mind, and
to religious orthodoxy, it’s all black. Some of them became air pollution and
cinders, a particularly sad fate for those reputed to have abhorred carbon for
some obscure reason. The fate of our community of 'Greenies' was different.

This is
where the Templars enter the story. There are many tales about the Templars.
There were also whispers that some at least were heretics. Well, green eyed
envy ever besmirches the successful as well as the useful, and there's no doubt
that the Templars were both successful and useful. Many were evidently pious
and humble, even mystical, qualities often denigrated by the worldly.

It
seems that the Templar Preceptor for this district took an interest in the fate
of our local 'Greenies' for some reason. Perhaps he may have liked their leader,
who seems to have been acolorful character, noted in the stories under various
pseudonyms such as 'Arch-priest Jeremiah'.In any case, as the local story goes, one afternoon the Preceptor paid a
visit to the 'Arch-priest'. The arrival of a group of well-armed and well
mounted men in Templar uniform caused much perturbation in those who saw them
pass, and who answered their polite request for directions to the dwelling of
the Arch-priest, who lived in a big farmhouse with a group of his followers.The Petrine mutterings of these followers
were quickly quelled by more thoughtful assessment of the Preceptor's escort of
hard faced war veterans. When it became clear that the Preceptor was there to
visit the Arch-priest, but not to arrest him, the followers, although not the
escort, relaxed.

The two men
got on well. Both were well educated and well informed with broad
interests.After the usual social
preliminaries such as discussion of the weather and the crop prospects, talk
turned to religion, particularly the early history of Christianity. Was it
chance or Providence which had decided which of the numerous schools of opinion
were to flourish and be accepted as Orthodox, and which would be condemned as
heretical? How strange it was that views at one time completely acceptable and
spread by missionaries were later deemed unacceptable. What immense trouble the
Christological disputes of Byzantine theologians had caused their state. How
one of the Fathers of the Church had been condemned and excommunicated – two
centuries after his death. How one of these holy men had written that whatever
fables he had to tell the people, privately he would remain a philosopher. How
St. Paul had said that he would be all things to all men to bring them to
Christ. How some of the martyrs had been so in love with death that they had
forced their prosecution upon reluctant officials. How some of the missionaries
had adopted the local culture to facilitate the spreading of their gospel. How
Pope Gregory had sent Augustine to England with instructions to take over pagan
holy places and festivals and adapt them to Christianity. How the Bible
famously allowed that 'in my Father's House are many mansions', without
defining them more closely. The Preceptor mentioned that although the attention
of the Inquisition had been drawn to this area, they and his own organization
were very busy. He and his superiors were hopeful that the Holy Spirit would
soon lead an upsurge of faith in this district, whether through seeing the
condign severity with which the pertinaciously contumacious were dispatched, or
through the mercy with which God touched the hearts of sinners enabling their
repentance, remained to be seen; although he personally prayed for the
latter.The agents of the Inquisition
were expected to arrive in no more than two weeks’ time, then the answer might
be revealed. The message having been obliquely but clearly delivered, the two
men turned their attention to sampling and appraising the Arch-priest's supply
of locally brewed beer. Pronouncing it good, the Preceptor and his men
departed, leaving a thoughtful Arch-priest surrounded by inquisitive followers.

Next Sunday
the Church of the Green Jesus opened for worship. When the Inquisition opened
their inquiries in the district a week later, it sheltered many who might not
have passed rigorous inspection otherwise. It was controversial from the start.
Few believed in the sincerity of this sudden Damascene conversion, although all
accepted that a visit from a Templar Preceptor just ahead of the arrival of the
Inquisition could have induced a profound change of consciousness comparable to
such an event. Seeing the light was obviously preferable to seeing the flames.
Those few who felt otherwise had left to meet their fiery destiny elsewhere. Some
of the Righteous were outraged; the self-righteous often are. Complaints to
officialdom were met by references to motes and beams, the parable wherein the
late recruited laborers received as much pay as those who had worked
throughout the whole day, the return of the Prodigal Son, rejoicing over the
salvation of lost lambs, injunctions to Christian charity, and much blandness.
Naturally the members of this new church were closely observed, but no one
found sufficient evidence against them to justify treating them as relapsed
heretics, so the barking diminished as the caravan moved on.

For
most of the Greenies it was a surprisingly easy change, once they were careful
to adjust their rhetoric and nomenclature. 'Global Warming' easily translated
as 'Hell'.Strenuous personal efforts to
avoid it, and widespread preaching to that effect were standard and expected
Christianpractices. Satan and his minions easily substituted for big
corporations. 'Sin' replaced carbon in their diatribes. 'Salvation' became of
much greater relevance than technology. Personal austerity and not-too-pointed
references to greed, corruption and hypocrisy were likewise accepted as normal.
'Waste not, want not’ and 'You can't have your cake and eat it' were old saws.
Proficiency in natural gardening and skill in handicrafts were useful and now
necessarily becoming commonplace. Oil, or indeed 'gas' in any form, and their
products were no longer available to the general public, so tirades against
them ceased as they became irrelevant. The historically inclined could discuss
the history of Indulgences and of carbon trading. As usual, beards remained
fashionable for reputed holy men, and now also for many others.Wild eyes and long robes remained optional.
The translation and transition from a secular materialist frame of reference to
a Christian religious one was not so difficult. As they ceased to stick out so
egregiously, fewer of their neighbors felt that they were nails which needed
to be hammered down. Indeed, as the Templar probably expected, after a couple
of generations the members of the church would have been horrified had they
been able to know and understand the true beliefs of their founders.

They quickly
developed a distinctive brand, market niche or theological emphasis. A special
devotion to St. Francis was part of it. Preaching to birds and beasts still
seemed 'far out', but the notion if not the practice, provided an acceptably
Christian frame of reference for a religiously oriented concern with nature.
The previous sentimentality about lambs had diminished as hunger and poverty
made them again a profitable food source not often available to much of the
population, rather than infantile woolly images of cloying sweetness. The Agnus
Dei remained a highly acceptable religious symbol. Woolen textiles silently
replaced synthetic materials that were no longer available. Shepherds were
authentically Biblical characters and had a renewed economic significance.
Speculation about the relation between their woolen clothing, the web of
nature and the Seamless Robe of Christ which was divided by his persecutors,
although it may have had the potential for heresy, was within acceptable
bounds. Eucharistic symbolism easily extended from bread and wine to embrace
mutton or lamb as the body of Christ, for those who could afford it, although
officially only the former were Biblically endorsed for use in Holy Communion.

The pious
legend of St. Hubert who beheld a crucifix between the horns of a stag provided inspiration for a local style of flowing art depicting not
only the very Biblical vines, figs and olive trees, but also deer nibbling the
leaves of the Tree of Life, Noah's Ark, Elijah's ravens, lions and lambs,
fishes, the Evangelical emblems of lion, man, eagle and bull, and any other
reference to flora and fauna that could attest a more or less authentically
Biblical provenance.No one caviled at
the occasional mushroom in discreet corners of designs. Corn (all edible grain,
not specifically maize) and wine were acceptable, and no one took it amiss if a
special devotion to St. John Barleycorn was sometimes exuberantly expressed.
Indeed, and not for the first time, other and sometimes older faiths were
subsumed under the rubric of Christianity without much difficulty.

The
state of innocence in this Edenic garden persisted for some years, or even
decades. Eventually a smart young man named Jonas Caraway became prominent in
this loose knit community. A throwback to an earlier era, he was definitely
what had been known as a 'go-getter'. Jonas became a leader determined to craft
an organization and a business-model which would have substantial impact and
outreach beyond the locality and its community or congregation. He forged the
Church of the Green Jesus into a vehicle to serve his special devotion to money
and self-publicity.His business talent
soon created, if not an empire, then certainly a prosperous province in the
world of recreational drug growing and distribution. The Church had become
locally and discreetly known as a supplier ofmarijuana and 'entheogenic' mushrooms, but Jonas turned it into a
business, and combined the notions of business and cult. His early profits were
ploughed back into the business, sprinkled liberally with pious references to
the Parable of the Talents, and brought forth strange fruits.The acreage under cultivation was increased,
the staff or congregation was 'upgraded' and motivated to increase
productivity, branch offices or Churches were opened across more and more of the country. 'Bishop Jonas' as he rapidly
became, and his supervisors or Canons, were soon known to be heavy handed and
easily offended, but there was little adverse publicity, and 'My God, how the
money rolls in, rolls in!' was the overriding theme.

So far, so
good. Or, so bad. A matter for the perhaps negligent or somnolent or corrupt
local authorities and their perhaps incompetent or over-stretched police
forces, but not something to gain widespread notoriety, you might think. So far
you would be right. Jonas however had another gift, not exactly Eucharistic, a
flair for self-publicity unfortunately combined with a sneering sense of his
own cleverness. Not satisfied with success, Jonas had to improve upon it.

The original
Church had a sign outside it, a literally green painted image of Jesus.
Certainly distinctive, but not offensive. It is said that at first this image
had been outlined by a sort of flashing green light which glowed in the dark,
much used by the people in olden times. Believe that story if you will. In any
case, as success went to his head, ‘Bishop' Jonas demonstrated his wit by
revising the liturgy of his church, and then advertising it. Smoking a
marijuana cigarette became the new sacrament, and he would place a burning
'joint' in the mouth of the green image of Jesus, often standing outside the
church building, laughing with passers-by and alternating the cigarette between
his lips and those of Jesus, whilst garbed in his self-designed ecclesiastical
cope which featured a huge green marijuana leaf on a golden background.
Certainly distinctive, and very offensive. So far, so local.

A lamb not
being enough, Jonas went for the sheep. As his cult expanded, he became more
concerned with branding and advertising his products and himself. He packaged
his products in green paper bearing a depiction of Jesus and himself standing
together wearing Biblical robes and smoking marijuana cigarettes with the
letters 'J' and 'C' over their respective heads and leering smiles on their
faces. This Unique Selling Point certainly began to draw attention to him. His
end was now inevitable, but just what the event was which lit the faggots he
had so carefully placed around his own feet, remains obscure. One version is
that a well-known minister of a more orthodox denomination pulled out a
handkerchief at a church gathering and one of these lurid covers fluttered out
of his pocket with it, to the scandal of the assembled dignitaries once one of
them had retrieved it. Others suggest that business rivals who had their own
discreet contacts, began to whisper more and more urgently into official ears
as Jonas became more successful and as more evidence against him could be
presented to the public. Out of sight, wheels began to turn, joints and bones
began to crack, names began to be screamed, and the Hounds of God ran silently
upon his trail.

They
say he did not die well. He was not the only one to die of course. Most of his
followers were caught, although a few probably escaped, and many of his
customers and business contacts shared their fate.That's what made the name famous, or
infamous, of course. Jonas wasn't the only person with a sense of drama and the
ability to ensure that a message was heard loudly and clearly. His screams and
babbling certainly were heard for hours. The executions were spread over the
country and widely publicised. Special attention was devoted to the execution
of 'Bishop' Jonas. All local officials and prominent persons were required to
attend. National dignitaries attended. The local populace, including the
children, were also mostly assembled there, few exemptions were permitted.
Deterrence is more effective if you see the pain, hear the screams and howls,
smell the smoke and the roasting flesh, watch it basted in its own blood, track
the melting and bubbling fat, smell the appetizing smell of roasting meat, see
someone you once knew become an unrecognizable distorted blackened lump, still
screaming, whilst his blood and sizzling fat and soot and ashes smears your own
face. It helps if you puke your own guts out over your own and your neighbor's
shoes, and hear their moans and sobs as well as your own all overlain by the
howling of the object that had been a man. People remember that, and pass on
the story to their grandchildren. The officials and dignitaries, although many
blanched and gulped, did not lose their dignity by moaning or puking or turning
their gazes away like women or children. No mercy was shown. The event lasted all morning.When it seemed he might die too soon, the fire was slaked, or raked
back. Others who had not been adjudged so guilty had been allowed bags of
gunpowder around their necks to end their misery much sooner, but this was
denied to Jonas. He was no martyr. He had no cause but his own vanity.He lacked the dignity to die without whining
and pleading and cursing uselessly. He deserved what happened to him. Some of
the more hardened and stony-faced officials were able to sit smoking marijuana
cigarettes as they watched. Another brand obviously. Marijuana is not illegal.
Blasphemy is.

The little church fell upon hard times
after that. It was abandoned for years and neglected as nobody was left to look
after it and no group wished to be associated with its name, for fear of being
regarded as surviving followers of Jonas.The name and the memory survived locally of course, and people knew the
stories associated with the little building and its strange image of Jesus.
After various tramps and misfits who had drifted by and squatted in and around
the building had become nuisances and been moved on feeling sore, another group
crystallized there. They were known as Diggers, perhaps partly in reference to
the 17th century sect and partly because they cultivated and
searched for mushrooms and spent a lot of time grubbing around. Something of
the ideas and stories surrounding the place filtered through to them and in
local thought they assumed or resumed the group identity of the Church. This
group however had somewhat different interests. This time it was mushrooms and
symbiotic forms of life. Many of the stories associated with these people are
extremely strange and disturbing. Some may be derived from what they themselves
said. Others may have come from what was later gleaned by the inquiries of the
Inquisition. It is widely accepted that mushrooms are the fruit of fungi which
attach themselves to the roots of trees. They said that the trees and the fungi
exchanged food, much like, they also said, people and plants exchange different
types of air. Maybe they did know more than ordinary people; I can’t say. The
stories began to get a bit scary when they said such things as that trees could
make their leaves poisonous to dissuade or kill animals which over-grazed them,
and warn each other when the animals started to munch on one of them, and
transfer food or water to each other via their roots and networks of
fungi.There were creepy echoes of
ancient stories of people being lost in a forest where the trees slowly closed
in on them, or of Triffids and Venus fly traps. From the olden days came a
legend that the great trees of the Pacific Northwest coast had been fed on
salmon by the bears which guarded them. There were whispers of bugs which got
into mice, and caused them to act counter to their natural instincts and to
seek out cats rather than flee from them, and hints that something similar
could happen to people, maybe spread by parasitic fungi. Perhaps there was a
natural mutation or some form of ghoulish experiment went wrong – or right.
Concern definitely became Inquisitorial when rumors spread that they worshiped and had communion with the spirits of trees and desert cacti and
vines from distant forests; but that must have come a lot later.Obviously the only Biblical spin on anything
which smacked of Sacred Groves or High Places or relations with unclean spirits
led straight through the fire to Hell. At the time of course, their neighbors
would not have seen anything very strange about these people. Tending to one’s
trees and to one’s garden and to one’s own business was absolutely normal. Only
later could people wonder whether these folk had somehow become taken over by
their trees, mentally controlled by them and used as ambulant servitors. That
after all would not have been so different from how plants used animals and insects
to spread their pollen and their seeds. Maybe, as with fungi, they became more
tightly and physically linked. Very nice for the trees if they could get people
to bring them food and water, spread and plant their seeds and generally act as
their gardeners. Fungi, trees, humans, each making use of the others. Was any
one of them in charge? If plants could create scents and colors to attract
insects, and some could give humans intense emotional and mystical experiences,
perhaps they would provide some kind of feelings of happiness or even bliss to
keep their human labor force content and productive. It’s only a couple of
steps further to have them lay down their lives and those of others for their
owners.

A
new artistic motif began to be noticed in association with the Church of the
Green Jesusand its followers and hangers-on.That was the Green Man, a
revival of a much older image, a man’s head peeking through foliage. No
satisfactory explanation was ever offered, although later there was speculation
as to whether it might have meant something. A wild natural consciousness
perhaps, or human intelligence expressed through vegetable life, or a man
assimilated to a tree maybe. If the Inquisition couldn’t settle the question,
neither can I.

What was later
settled was that The Men of the Green Lord as some of them called themselves (O
shades of Osiris!) had formed a cult somewhat along the lines of the Thugs.
They became great travelers, working as artists, carvers, tinkers, conjurors,
entertainers, gardeners and plant distributors and so forth. They spread the
image along with the cult, and used it as a recognition sign, rather as the
early Christians had used the fish. They did not use the name of the Church of
the Green Jesus, nor create local ‘branches’ -hmm. At first they tended to
return there each year as a kind of general meeting place, and some of their
gains, well or ill-gotten, were used to maintain it and its surroundings. It
was probably rather beautiful, and their influence created a modest prosperity
in several local businesses. They even established their own passenger and
freight haulage businesses. ‘Tree Line’ or ‘Green Way’ or something twee like
that I think they may have been called.They are said to have acquired property in the district and to have
created gardens open to the public, and their devotion to composting and
mulching became well known.

All good
things come to an end, they say. I suppose the same may be said of bad or
indifferent things, although they are less wistfully missed.In this case the end began far away in a town
where the Green Men had established several of their organizations. There are
always a certain number of missing people. Sometimes they are found, in good or
in bad condition. Sometimes they do not want to be found. Sometimes there is a
hue and cry, particularly if the missing person is either a person of
consequence, or a child or someone else about whose imagined fate a great deal
of popular sentiment may easily and profitably be stirred up.

‘Ah, you
just can’t get the staff these days, can you?’ Excessively rapid expansion of
an organization, unrestrained ambition, lack of supervision and training, low
quality of staff, lack of due diligence and risk assessment, all these and
other familiar terms of business ‘cant’ may have played a part in their
downfall. Along with bad luck, fate, the wrath of God, or probability, perhaps.

It was of
course a huge scandal. Several entangled scandals in fact. As the rigorous
investigations of the judicial and Inquisitorial authorities established, (and
we may be fully confident that there was nothing slipshod in their work,) a couple of low level Green
Men had decided to improve their prospects by developing an unofficial line in
kidnapping. Their victim, the son of a successful businessman, (and indeed, why
would anyone kidnap the son of an unsuccessful one?) had escaped from the
inadequately secured shed in which they had left him inadequately secured
whilst they went on an alcoholic spree to discuss their future plans, none of
which were to come to fruition in their actual future, short as it was to be.
This shed was located in the ‘staff only’ yard at the back of one of the public
gardens which they maintained. When the police arrived, in force need we say, their
curiosity extended to the rest of the area. One of its facilities was a small
bone crushing plant which produced the bone meal used for horticultural
purposes. Some of the as yet uncrushed bones aroused suspicion, which forensic
examination of the bones and of the meal justified, by confirming that they
were human remains. Remains of whom, and where were the remaining remains, so
to speak?

The
opportunity to close many missing person cases stimulated police investigation
in other districts, once news spread, and as the reluctance of detained persons
associated with Green Men organizations to assist these inquiries was overcome,
it spread fast. All the faster because of another interrelated scandal. In the
course of investigating the gardening businesses in adjacent districts for more
human bones, the murdered and abused corpse of a missing infant was discovered
in acompost heap of one of their businesses. This child had been
missing for some weeks and already there had been considerable public agitation
about her fate. That nailed them. NO! NO! Not literally! That would have been
blasphemous. We certainly don’t want to give a wrong impression about anything
which the Inquisition might find objectionable. Do you?I mean there was so much public outcry that
investigation focused on them even more intensely. Although it was the corpse
of that sadly mistreated infant which made them monsters in the public mind,
the Green Men steadfastly denied any involvement in or knowledge about her
death. Some went to their deaths denying it after they had admitted other
killings, and protesting that it would not have been a good way to prepare
compost. It may be that it was just a coincidence and some other murderer
escaped justice when they were blamed.

The investigators
found that not only did the Green Men murder people for no better motive than
to use their bodies to nourish trees and other plants, they had done so for
many years, and made a profit from their sales of plant food. This news make
many people look a bit askance at their crops and gardens, wondering just whose
remains might be helping them to thrive, and resulting in a drop in the
popularity of such products. A bit strange really, as people have no objection
to eating plants and know that their own bodies will go back to the soil, ‘dust
to dust; ashes to ashes’ potentially to nourish plants in their turn, but
people are not altogether rational. It was soon seen that there was a strong
correlation between the growth of Green Man activity in an area and reports of
missing persons. Indeed, increases in such reports were able to indicate areas
where they were operating without as yet establishing organizations associated
with them. Initially investigators thought they were dealing with a criminal
organization following a bizarre business model. It had few links to the recognized criminal underworld however. It was puzzling that many of the
corpses were not turned into profit, but chopped up and buried near trees,
often in the gardens and parks which the Green Men maintained. Sometimes
portions of the bodies had been transported long distances to be buried under
special trees rather than disposed of more conveniently. Indeed, at first
the authorities had not realized that the connections went beyond the particular
businesses and that the Green Man image was actually associated with them and
involved people who had no connection with these businesses, and that the
image, when it came to their attention, was the key to understanding events.It was when the authorities discovered that
such burials were not just a convenient way to conceal a murder, but were the
motive for the murder; and furthermore, that it was the preferred method of the
leading lights for their own interment, and that these leading lights had a
special fondness or devotion for individual trees, that things became really
serious. The hints of an organized religious cult underlying these strange and
repulsive happenings, and their hysterical magnification by the popular press,
immediately elevated the matter from the criminal, past the political, to the
religious plane.

It was an
immense embarrassment. The country had been infiltrated by a well organized,
extensive and criminal organization, and much worse - an evil pagan cult,
without the authorities having been aware of its existence and of the dangers
it posed. They first found out about it by reading the popular press! How was
this possible? Why had the Inquisition, the organization tasked with protecting
the morals and religious purity of the population and the state, not detected
and eliminated this danger? This last question was certainly raised in high
places, although the press had the prudence not to do more than hint at it.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? was a question in many minds, but sensibly it
was never publicly asked.

With
so much egg dripping from important and humorless faces, someone was going to
fry. Or roast. Many did. How then did the little church survive? Perhaps it had
some luck, but by then itwas no longer central, or even of interest to the
Green Men. Their operations had spread far afield, and the businesses which
were to prove fatal had not been operated here. Any connection with local
disappearances long ago was not queried. The discreet graves of the founders
under their favorite trees, or their successors, were not remembered and not
disturbed. Its name was not used so noconnection was identified. It may be that there were a few
convenient deaths or disappearances which broke any living links between the Green
Men and the Green Jesus before the authorities reached them. Now the tangle of
tales is only of interest to a few antiquarians such as ourselves, although the
Church remains part of local lore and its green image, somewhat restored, may
still be seen. The Green Man is no longer a popular artistic motif around here,
but you may still find a few such heads near old graves under the trees.
Sometimes it’s even possible to imagine such likenesses in knotty branches or
roots.

Yes, we can
visit it. It’s not far to walk, although there’s not a great deal to see. I
like to stroll or sit under the trees about the area, and help to keep the
place tidy. It’s very peaceful there, although sometimes strange thoughts come
to me. What might happen, for instance, if we took the notion of a Green Jesus
seriously? What if the Second Coming has already occurred, and we missed it?
‘When Jesus came to Birmingham they merely passed him by’, a poet wrote. What
if He was here and we didn’t notice? What if he’s still waiting for us? What if
this time he came, not as a human, but as a tree? What if we considered the
Holy Cross seriously? ‘He came to his own and his own received him not’. Has
the plant kingdom received him in our stead? Has he been there all along, but
we have been too thick to notice? What about the Real Presence of divinity in
bread and wine? What about the myth of the Tree of Life? After the Norse
Ragnarok they expected a new humanity to emerge from the Tree to repopulate the
earth. What about that? The early depictions of Jesus on the Cross showed him
in majesty, with arms outstretched, outlined by but not bound to the ‘Tree’ as
it was often called. Only later was there a change to depictions of a literal
crucifixion. Enough questions before we attract the attention of a literal
Inquisition.

Here we are.
That’s the famous wooden image of the Green Jesus. I’ll just wait and sit under
the trees there while you look around. Sometimes it seems so beautiful that
one’s spirit is uplifted and one seems to share with nature in some great rite
or hymn of praise.There’s a sense of joining in a noble dance with every other
aspect of Nature, of participating in a joyous harmony as if each species, in
living, expressed some special aspect of divinity and their lives combined in
repetitious but ever-changing ways, as a melody or tapestry to display the
action of divinity in life to Itself. There He is, the Lord of the Dance, at
the centre, and acting within all of them, inviting us to join, assuming or
resuming the place that was always ours. Alas for us, since our pride excluded
Him from our hearts, we no longer know our place, nor can we deftly tread the
measure, nor subtly improvise without disruption. How clumsy are our attempts
at conscious integration! What a ripple of confusion spreads from our
determination to do good and to be right; requiring extended efforts from the
more skilful dancers to absorb and mitigate our efforts. The vision fades,
leaving a feeling of regret, and the image of a mighty river, whose movements
have left an ox-bow lake, almost stagnant and cut off from the flow. This is
where our egotism and narrowness has left us, almost self-severed from the
spiritual source of our physical situation. At the last, arises His sadly
smiling image, not crucified, not haloed, but crowned with oak leaves, and
beckoning us to leave the illusory security of our egos and allow him to re-join
us to the flow of love and life.

Hearing the leaves rustle one may fancy one almost hears
what the Lord God said to Adam when they walked together in that Garden, or
what Lord Zeus spoke through Dodona’s oak. Perhaps if you are deemed worthy you
may hear the answer. Ah yes, there it is. When the light is right it shimmers
on the Green Jesus as if it was gold, and He may smile or even wink.